Thursday, February 25, 2016

How Will Jamie Fraser Get Back to Being "the Man He Wants to Be"?

Outlander's first season ended on a dark note, with Black Jack (Tobias Menzies) torturing and raping hero Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughhan) before Claire (Caitriona Balfe) could come to his rescue. Jamie and Claire will still feel the effects of the brutal attack as they arrive in France at the start of Season 2.
"There's definitely still some mental trauma there. The physical side he can heal. It's not modern-day life, so there isn't a psychologist he can talk to," Heughan tells TVGuide.com. "He did something that was out of his control. He betrayed Claire and he feels guilty about that. He feels that he can't be the husband or the man that he wants to be. He needs some sort of reconciliation."

How he'll get that reconciliation remains to be seen, but it may come at a cost. And it won't be a painless journey for Claire either. "If you watch someone that you love go through something as horrific and traumatic as that, it can't help but affect you; the empathy that you would feel for the person that you love and the guilt as well, because you wish that you could take away their pain and you can't. I think Claire somehow feels responsible in some ways for Jamie being in that situation," Balfe explains.

That guilt will lead to Claire playing a very active role in helping Jamie rebuild his life. There's a baby on the way to bring them hope, but Claire comes up with a more immediate plan to help them get past everything that happened. "She also takes this idea of giving him a mission as something that will help him heal and take his mind off what he'd gone through," Balfe says. "We see her really being this champion of this idea that they are really going to change the future. It gives him something to get up for."